Fire Hillary Clinton ( preferably out of a cannon ) by GinoBiffaroni

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Fire Hillary Clinton ( preferably out of a cannon )

POSTED BY: GINOBIFFARONI
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 15:14
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Saturday, October 31, 2009 5:14 PM

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/20091031213328259
58.html

US 'softens' on Israeli settlements

In their talks earlier, Abbas, right, rejected Clinton's request to resume negotiations [AFP]

The US has called for the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians as soon as possible and without preconditions, an apparent climb down on earlier demands for Israel to halt settlement building.

The settlement issue should be considered as part of peace negotiations, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said at a news conference in Jerusalem late on Saturday.

"There has never been a precondition. It's always been an issue within the negotiations," Clinton said, adding that Israel had made "unprecedented" concessions on settlement building.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who spoke alongside Clinton, said Palestinian demands for a full Israeli settlement freeze were being used to prevent the renewal of peace talks.

"It is actually being used as a pretext ... as an obstacle that prevents the re-establishment of negotiations," he said.

The administration of Barack Obama, the US president, had previously demanded that Israel halt all settlement building before negotiations could resume, a move that was applauded by the Palestinians but which brought the US and Israel to loggerheads.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law.

'US climb down'

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem correspondent, said: "The Americans would never admit to backtracking, but if we watch the way that the language has changed and the way the emphasis has changed, it's quite clear there has been a slide in the American position.

"Now, we hear Hillary Clinton urging an immediate resumption of talks - 'get back on the path', she said, really not wanting to look at conditions.

In their early months in office, Obama and Clinton called for a complete halt to settlement activity.

But after bringing Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Netanyahu together at the United Nations in New York in September, Obama called only for "restraint" on settlements, not a "freeze".

"We really watched Hillary Clinton fall into line with Israel," Rowland said of Saturday's press conference.

The move is unlikely to be accepted by the Palestinians.

"What the Palestinians are frustrated about is what seems to be the Obama administration's wish to start from a clean slate," Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Ramallah, said.

"The 1967 borders seems to be up for negotations, and that is something no Palestinian leader can accept."

Palestinian rejection

Abbas earlier rejected Clinton's request to resume negotiations when they met in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Abbas rejected the US request because the recent deal reached between George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, and Israel "does not include a complete freeze of settlement activities".

"The real problem is that Israel is not ready to discuss these issues and America is still unable to convince the Israelis to come back to the 'Road Map'"

Nabil Abu Rdeneh,
spokesman for Palestinian president
Erakat said that Israel had refused to halt construction of some 3,000 houses currently being built in the West Bank or any construction in annexed east Jerusalem.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Abbas, said the move reflected America's inability to persuade Israel to freeze settlement building, but that Clinton had told the Palestinians that the US still considered the settlements illegal.

"The US position concerning these settlements - as we heard from Clinton in the UAE - was clear, that they consider all settlement activities illegal and this is an official US position which we heard many times before," he told Al Jazeera.

"The real problem is that Israel is not ready to discuss these issues and America is still unable to convince the Israelis to come back to the 'Road Map'," he said, referring to a plan for steps to be taken by Israel and the Palestinians, first outlined in 2002.

"Even the previous American administration [under George Bush] in Annapolis agreed that settlement activity should be frozen."

Mark Regev, Netanyahu's spokesman, had no comment when asked what gestures Israel might be willing to make to help Abbas.

He reiterated Israel's position that it is ready to relaunch talks without preconditions.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down late last year and have remained stalled, despite the renewed push by the US.

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Saturday, October 31, 2009 8:21 PM

DREAMTROVE

I figure just watching Hillary is payback for all the potshots at Palin. I'm just sitting back with a bowl of popcorn ;)

Actually, yeah, sure, I fear for my country, but I can't help but enjoy the total disaster. Okay, Point taken, the GOP is a total disaster. Now it's the democrats turn to prove that they are also a total disaster. Anyone have any decent third party ideas?

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Saturday, October 31, 2009 11:35 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I figure just watching Hillary is payback for all the potshots at Palin. I'm just sitting back with a bowl of popcorn ;)

Actually, yeah, sure, I fear for my country, but I can't help but enjoy the total disaster. Okay, Point taken, the GOP is a total disaster. Now it's the democrats turn to prove that they are also a total disaster. Anyone have any decent third party ideas?

Be more fun to have Palin vs Clinton celebrity deathmatch

less actual people getting hurt that way.....

or better yet, kidnapping the negotiating teams from the Palestinians, Israel, and the US....

putting them in a secure camp, and giving ALL of them the same treatment the average Palestinian gets for an entire year.

Then sit them down

Remember when Anthony Zinni was sent to help negotiate the peace process there... then he ended up resigning saying US policy in the area was totally insane, and Bush was an idiot

maybe that is more the sort needed to run with this

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Sunday, November 1, 2009 4:10 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

No, don't fire her. Take everything off her plate but Israel/Palestine, and put her permanent office in Jerusalem. Then reduce her security detail slowly... Pretty soon Ol' Bill is a widower...Winners all 'round.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009 6:13 AM

DREAMTROVE

I'm sorry, sure I'm game for Palin in a catfight, but the democrats have yet to come up with anyone I'd want to see Palin in a catfight with. Maybe Katie Couric.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009 12:19 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8336342.stm

gag her, then fire her

Abdullah Abdullah "As far as I'm concerned, the decision I have reached is not to participate," Abdullah later told reporters. "I have strong, strong reservations about the credibility of the process."

Abdullah had complained that Karzai turned down his demands for changes in the Independent Election Commission and other measures that Abdullah said would prevent massive fraud in the second round of balloting.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/11/01/afghanistan-abdullah-runoff.h
tml

Hillary Clinton..... (from the video) the fact that Abdullah quit legitimizes the election..??

Good Grief.. some people will say anything and expect to still have credibility

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Sunday, November 1, 2009 7:23 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

"The Americans would never admit to backtracking, but if we watch the way that the language has changed and the way the emphasis has changed, it's quite clear there has been a slide in the American position.

"Now, we hear Hillary Clinton urging an immediate resumption of talks - 'get back on the path', she said, really not wanting to look at conditions."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/20091124501474827
1.html

Perhaps since the US has zero credibility, they should just go home. Stop sending Israel money, keep your crooked diplomats at home.

Putin would be a far more honest peace broker, ...

and that is sad

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Monday, November 2, 2009 6:24 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

This is interesting

Jewish directors challenge Israel
By Sakhr al-Makhadi at the London Film Festival

Eyes Wide Open, a love story between two Orthodox Jewish men, provoked anger at its screening

A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.

The best documentary award has gone to one of the year's most controversial films.

Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America's Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.

He gets inside the ADL, which claims to be the most powerful lobby group of its type anywhere in the world. With unprecedented access, he travels with them as they meet foreign leaders, and use the memory of the Holocaust to further their pro-Israeli agenda.

At one point, an ADL leader admits to Shamir that "we need to play on that guilt".

Shamir says his film, Defamation, started out as a study of "the political games being played behind the term anti-Semitism".

"It became more a film about perceptions and the way Jews and Israelis choose to see themselves and define themselves - a lot of the time unfortunately choosing the role of eternal victims as a way of life."

Israel's national psyche

He wanted to find out how this mentality has become part of Israel's national psyche.
The film suggests that the attitude is thrust upon children from an early age. School trips to concentration camps in Poland run year-round.

From just 500 children in the 1980s, he claims around 30,000 are now flown to Europe every year.

He discovers that the trips are not designed to educate, but to provoke an emotional reaction. They fly out of Israel euphoric, and end their journey in tears, talking about their shared hatred.

They are accompanied by secret service agents who prevent them from talking to any locals - they are led to believe that most Poles are anti-Semites.

The end result is disturbing. The victim mentality is being used to justify Israel's occupation and colonisation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza.

In the film, one Israeli Jew tells Shamir that she refuses to get upset by Israeli aggression against the Palestinians because "we" faced worse. To her, the Holocaust justifies anything the Israeli army does.

And for Shamir, that is the real danger. "We are experiencing the most right-wing government we've ever had, and there is very little room for discussion. Putting so much focus on hate and the negative, I don't see it as a healthy thing."

In Israel, the film has received a mixed response. "It's kind of a love or hate type of response to the film," Shamir says. "It's very hard to get people to come and watch documentaries in the cinemas in Israel."

Touchy subject

In the UK, too, there is anger towards Defamation.

Mark Gardiner from one of Britain's biggest anti-Semitism campaign groups, the Community Security Trust, believes the film could put Jews at risk.

Samuel Maoz's film, Lebanon, has sparked debate inside Israel
"All of a sudden some bloke appears out of nowhere, oh he's an Israeli, oh he's a Jew, therefore what he says must have more credence than what organisations like my own and the ADL have said for years - I think that shows a deep-seated bias."

And he is furious at the suggestion that anti-Semitism is being used for political purposes.

"This assumption that people are saying it because they're being malicious, because they know that it's not anti-Semitic, but hey lets use anti-Semitism in order to win the Israel case, that's what I find really really offensive," Gardiner says.

Shamir is not surprised by reactions like that.

"Anti-Semitism is a very touchy subject and making a film about anti-Semitism is almost like walking on thin ice, you're going to hurt people's feelings."

Martial Kurtz from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) believes the film can make a difference to activists like him.

He says all too often Israel's supporters label groups like the PSC as anti-Semitic.

"There are many Jewish organisations which campaign [with us] against the occupation, campaign against the siege in Gaza," he says. "So the whole argument falls flat."

'Rocking the boat'

Defamation is not the only controversial movie at this year's London Film Festival.

Eyes Wide Open provoked anger and walkouts when it was screened.

It is a love story between two Orthodox Jewish men set in Jerusalem. Despite trying to keep their affair secret, the pair are threatened with violence by the community's elders, leading to tragedy.

Director Haim Tabakman knew the film would not be easy for some Jews to watch. "This film has a provocative pitch," he says. "Every good film is political."

But he just wants people to face reality. "If you talk about it, it exists, so it's not in their interests to talk about it," he told Al Jazeera.

"It's like the flood with Noah and his ark - the water came to destroy everything but something new came out of it. Sometimes it's good to shake the boat."

'Victims of war'

Another director causing waves is Samuel Maoz, whose war film Lebanon is sparking debate inside Israel.

"You can't change anything without first of all talking about it," he says. "The film moves people to talk, even to argue with each other."

Maoz's film, which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September, is based on his own experiences as his army invaded Lebanon in 1982. He says he made the film because of the guilt which still haunts him to this day.

"I'm not comparing between the suffering of a Lebanese woman who lost her family to the suffering of a soldier who fell into a no way out situation and needs to kill. If I can make some kind of scale, she is in level 10 and he is in the bottom, he is in level two. But both of them are victims of war."

He knows words like that will cause controversy in Israel, but he is ready for the backlash.

"The army is not something holy, especially after the 2006 Lebanon war. In war itself there are no good guys and bad guys. The war is the bad guy."

Maoz believes that Israel will only become less belligerent when civilians are shown the realities of war.

"First of all it was a need to unload and expose the war as it is, naked, without all the heroic stuff and the rest of the cliches."

But Maoz has a bigger aim - to stop Israel launching attacks on Palestinians and Lebanese.

"Every film has its ambition to change something ... the film is attacking war itself," he says.

"Peace will come but it's just a question of time and time is blood. If we can find a short cut we can save a lot of blood for both sides."

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091031142820116973.html

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 3:45 AM

JONGSSTRAW

She's doing a good job considering the impossible situations she's dealing with. She's out there trying, not in NYC buying shoes and handbags on Got. time like her predecessor. Nothing of substance has been done in the Middle East in decades. The Iranian nuke threat siuation makes the Palestinian situation a bit moot anyhow. It stands to reason that she would be working closely with Netanyahou 'cause he's the one with an air force and nukes.

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 9:47 AM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
She's doing a good job considering the impossible situations she's dealing with. She's out there trying, not in NYC buying shoes and handbags on Got. time like her predecessor. Nothing of substance has been done in the Middle East in decades. The Iranian nuke threat siuation makes the Palestinian situation a bit moot anyhow. It stands to reason that she would be working closely with Netanyahou 'cause he's the one with an air force and nukes.

The US once again has no credibility in this " peace process "

They picked a position, a reasonable one at that... then rolled over and gave in selling out one side to the other. Why do you think nothing of substance has happened in years?

" It stands to reason that she would be working closely with Netanyahou 'cause he's the one with an air force and nukes "

Then lets hope Russia will give Backfires and nukes to Iran, because if peace is ever going to happen, someone is going to have to level the playing field. The US has repeated demonstrated it cannot be an honest peace broker, so it needs to butt out.

Hell, corruption and exploitation seems to occur wherever the US has pitched its tent lately, is that what the US stands for? really?

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 2:13 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

Hell, corruption and exploitation seems to occur wherever the US has pitched its tent lately, is that what the US stands for? really?

We prefer that you just call it another victory for capitalism.

And, really... did you not know that's what we stood for? Really?

Mike

Let the wild rumpus start!

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 3:14 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Quote:
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:

Hell, corruption and exploitation seems to occur wherever the US has pitched its tent lately, is that what the US stands for? really?

We prefer that you just call it another victory for capitalism.

And, really... did you not know that's what we stood for? Really?

Mike

Let the wild rumpus start!

This is exactly why I am starting to support proliferation

Either your with the terrorists, or ... your with the terrorists

Lets party like its 1939

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